[tabs type=”horizontal”][tabs_head][tab_title][/tab_title][/tabs_head][tab]There’s been this meme floating around the internet for a year or two now. Anytime a conservative or libertarian mentions welfare or the 47%, the standard liberal retort is to cite that red “welfare” states receive more federal money than the IRS collects in taxes from that state. Liberal economist Paul Krugman would have you believe that Social Security and Medicare is what constitutes mooching. Their narrative is that Republicans are bigger moochers than Democrats.

The problem with both of those claims is that it doesn’t get to the heart of what “mooching” is. The problem with the first claim is that federal spending is made up mostly of defense expenditures at both the federal level and the state level. Defense is not welfare. Actual welfare and poverty programs only amount to about 10% of the expenditures at the federal level. Now if a state received only funds for poverty programs, then you could claim that it is a welfare state. But unfortunately for their argument, this is not this case. PBS states, “In all but a handful of states, Department of Defense dollars account for by far the majority of federal dollars.” (Other big ticket items that round out the list for state money from the federal government include farm subsidies, retirement programs and infrastructure projects) It’s simply a function of flowing from the states without large defense operations and retired people to the states with them. If a less populated state has a large military base with a legion of personnel conducting operations should we be surprised that there might be an imbalance of funds? No, because it is a government organization that is not producing goods, but is consuming ammo, gas, food, electricity, salaries etc.. Also, most states don’t tax military paychecks, which would somewhat offset the federal expenditure, so overall there is going to be a net draw of funds. But more to the point, national defense is a common good that benefits the whole country, so it can hardly be classified as mooching.

And then there are other problems with Krugman’s claim. Does he really consider Social Security and Medicare recipients, who paid payroll taxes into the system their whole lives only to get a payout during retirement, a moocher? I don’t think that is what constitutes a moocher in anyone’s definition, except maybe a very special liberal like Krugman. But wait, then there’s another problem; how do you control for a state that is a retirement haven like Florida or Arizona? A good portion of these people worked in other states only to migrate to the retirement haven during their golden years. So this would show up on the books as a contribution in one state and later a draw in another. These are not the welfare queens that are what people have in mind when they are talking about government dependency. But they want to argue that the red-states/Republicans are moochers, so they’ve got to fit the right set of facts to fit their narrative somehow.

Bloomberg jumped into the fray recently with an article attempting to stir up the debate. They titled it “Food Stamp Cut Backed by Republicans With Voters on Rolls” with the obvious implication that Republicans are the ones that benefit the most from food stamps. What did they find? “Among the 254 counties where food stamp recipients doubled between 2007 and 2011, Republican Mitt Romney won 213 of them in last year’s presidential election, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data compiled by Bloomberg.”

Aside from the obvious bias painting Republicans as heartless villains and Democrats the saviors with the “commitment to help those struggling to meet basic needs” line, the claim could sound pretty damning, right? Well, not if you are a critical thinker and ask the right questions. The first point that came to mind for me was that Romney won a majority of the counties in the country. Ergo, there are more red counties for events to happen. They didn’t use a rate and instead a raw number, so therefore even if the food stamp growth rate were uniformly distributed across the country’s counties, more would register for red counties. I bet the counties that had a doubling of traffic accidents also went to Romney. The second point that came to mind is the fact that these counties are much smaller than counties that went to Obama. In fact, they are less than half the size as shown in Table I. There are more opportunities for doubling, because it is much easier for a small county with a small food stamp population to double it than it is for a large county with a large food stamp population to do the same. But does a small county with 5,000 people and 500 food stamp recipients have the same weight as a large county with 50,000 people and 5000 food stamp recipients? What they should have done was report the population-weighted food stamp rate by party according to county voting preferences. Seems to me that would get to the heart of the matter. Since they went through all the datasets to aggregate the figure they reported, I bet they calculated this figure and would have published it had it been the result they were looking to report. But since they didn’t publish this figure, it tells you a lot of what they didn’t find, huh? Sometimes omission contains information.

*The Guardian reports about 1000 more counties/areas than officially reported by the census. If someone has any insight into the difference, please inform me.

To solidify their conclusion in the article they pull out a single county “which backed Romney with 81 percent of its vote, [and] has the largest proportion of food stamp recipients among those that he carried.” What was the proportion? 10%? 20%? How does it compare to Obama’s county with the highest proportion? No mention of that. We’ll get back to that later.

But anyway why pussyfoot around with all the misleading metrics about federal spending and food stamp growth with sleight of hand? If you want to determine who are the biggest moochers, why not go straight to the welfare data for starters? (Especially since those who are on welfare are generally on a whole host of other dependency programs, pardon the pun). Well we know the reason, but since I am on the other side of this debate, I will go straight to the relevant and inconvenient facts. They probably won’t surprise anyone unless they really believe the red state-moocher narrative. What I found is that blue states have an over representation of welfare cases relative to their population and as a consequence of the former, red states have under representation based on their population sizes.

About 1.3% of the nation are on welfare proper. I say proper because there are a whole treasure trove of backdoor welfare programs that don’t have the welfare label (think food stamps, tax credits and Social Security Disability), but I hope to run some analysis in the future if I can find all of these datasets. If the welfare population were uniformly distributed across the nation then each state would have 1.3% of their population on welfare. But what we find is that Democratic states have 24% more representation than the national average after adjusting for population size while Republicans have 43% less. And this is even giving Democrats Florida, which is one of the most evenly divided states in the union. Without Florida going to either party, Democratic states would be overrepresented by 33.7%. A shocking fact is that a full third of the welfare cases in the nationcome just from the state of California, yet they only represent 12% of the nation’s population.

If you want raw number of welfare dollars, you’ll see that only two states out of the top 15 welfare spenders are red states.
Even still, this is all a very indirect way of getting at the underlying issue of which party mooches more. Here’s a thought experiment: You could have a highly bifurcated county with lots of poor Democrats and lots of rich Republicans. Say all 49% of the Democrats are on food stamps and all 51% of the Republicans in the county are wealthy. Well the county would vote Republican, but the food stamp benefit ratio would also register highly (or vice versa, for that matter). In a more realistic case, you’d have 5% of the county on food stamps and the county could vote either way, but that wouldn’t tell you if the 5% was Republican or Democrat. So it’s really hard to pin down which party mooches more when looking at state or county level more unless you have individual data. Alas, we do.
Before we go there, I could draw your attention to the summary page that shows the largest growth in food stamp use went mostly to blue states and the highest proportion of food stamp use goes to Washington DC followed by a mix of blue and red states. But I’m not going to play this game. Frankly, because I don’t need to.

If you look at the interactive county map that shows the highest concentration of food stamp use, it does appear at first glance that the southern red states are the biggest offenders. But look a little deeper. Most would consider it to be racist to just point to a map showing racial representation, and since we have actual data on food stamp use, we can do better than just simple assumptions. But you will notice that in a majority of the cases, black recipients, a factor 93% correlated with Democrats, outnumber whites (a category that includes Hispanics) by a factor of two to one on average (even though whites outnumber blacks by a factor of 5 in the general population). In fact, running a regression on the percentage of blacks on food stamps against the percent of the population on food stamps (0.868, t-stat: 21.6) and the log of the county size (1.6, t-stat: 7.7) we find that a 1% increase in the size of a county results in 1.59% increase of the percentage of blacks on food stamps and for each 1% increase in the number of people on food stamps, the percentage of blacks on food stamps increases 0.86%, showing that on average, most of the food stamp growth dependency comes from blacks, and therefore Democrats.

What else? We also know that Republicans earn about 40% more income than Democrats, on average. Voter exit polls for the most recent election showed that 63% of the sub $30,000 per year vote went to Obama and Obama voters were less likely to have jobs (and were younger). From a recent NPR poll surveying the long term unemployed, the Democrat’s proportion is twice that of Republicans.

Liberals repeatedly question why conservatives “vote against their own interests.” But maybe the simple answer is because they aren’t. Think about it, who would? The answer to this ‘paradox’ is because the ones who are actually voting for Republicans aren’t mooching off the government. The Occam’s razor answer was staring them right in the face the whole time, but they either couldn’t see the facts, or deliberately ignored them for their agenda.

Comments

bobbymike34

Thoughtful and well researched thanks!

Sam Kendall

This article is certainly a lot more well thought out/researched than the retort I would have come up with. Which, in the interest of full disclosure, would have been to ask Liberals why they put up with red-states “mooching” when they clearly have so much contempt for red-states/Republicans/Tea-Partiers/Conservatives.

jk13

“The problem with the first claim is that federal spending is made up mostly of defense expenditures at both the federal level and the state level. Defense is not welfare”

I think you should re-read the research again, according to Tax Foundation who are the original source of the study actually controlled for military spending and found that the mooching of red states holds true whether one includes defense or not. And, defense is definitely welfare when many states use the federal dollars as a jobs program when even the military doesn’t need what they are producing.

Also, your PEW research link is very old, the updated stats shows the gaps have narrowed significantly.

REPORT racism when a black sargeant calls for the takedown of a black criminal…yet whites are to blame? How about “burn it down”… I’m glad CNN/MSNBC and their reporting jumps on this with factual stuff, like WHITEMAN chokes out BLACKMAN…leaving out that your precious LIBERTARD news ALWAYS will do this so you watch them and Al Sharpton makes millions. We will work for ours, and CNN will make theirs on HATE. We can’t do anything for the people in DETROIT though…go live there where the TRUTH, including 93% BLACK MURDERS are due to BLACK PEOPLE and 145 black people killed by POLICE while whites was 380…and go cry RACISM there. They will cry with you, at home, waiting for their next hand out. While we go to work, and lead REAL american lives. Math/LOGIC to Libertards is like Work to an “African american”

Don

Obama is a communist manifest speaker, he is socialist, it is how he got elected, he is the handout man, his wife is a looser also, neither ever held a job, been mooching off people everywhere, he deeply desires to be impeached, just listen to his words, he is a liar and does not even believe his own rhetoric, look at all his failed policies, he is a terrible failure in all that he does, that is what socialism will do in a land bought by the blood of true patriots, a land of Liberty, every death on every battlefield, earned Liberty…One never ever hears Obama use the word Liberty, it is against his own philosophy, one never uses words they hate…Wake up folks, Obama is the greatest hoax ever perpetuated against human kind, every where…

islandtelecom96

…you betchya !!

Oliver Pine

Food stamp & other “welfare” use is higher simply where there are no jobs that pay enough for people to get out of poverty. If you want to lower the amount of people on welfare then put businesses in the inner cities other than taco bell & liquor stores, build plants in rural rundown areas instead of China. If we had the jobs back we lost to China we would be sitting down around 4% unemployment. Then poor people could pay taxes instead of leeching off the government.

But, no we can get a 10% margin instead of a 5% margin. Employees and their lives don’t matter anymore. The fact that a country cannot physically exist for a long period of time on a solely consumption based model. People without jobs cannot consume. It doesn’t matter how cheap a toaster is. If you are broke you can’t buy one.

HardWorkWins

The areas you speak of have burdensome regulatory climates that deter businesses from locating there, ala California. The burdensome regulations brought to you by, you guessed it, liberals.

Oliver Pine

Yeah ok lets see did I mention California? No. I said rural run down areas.

Do they have “burdensome regulatory climates”? No.

Are those areas run by liberals? No.

Are they populated with a ton of out of work people that would be happy to work for even half the median household income? Yes.

So why aren’t the factories that used to be in the Rust Belt still running? Greed.

This is not a blue/red issue. There is likely very little that government can do about it. People who have wealth in America have decided that they don’t love their country enough to set up business here and essentially they aren’t Americans anymore.

Some of them like Jim Rogers, who made the bulk of his money manipulating the market, have even packed up and left America. It might be unkind to call him a traitor, but I don’t mind being unkind.

HardWorkWins

More clueless generalizations… let me simplify for the economically illiterate. Companies exist to make profit. When expenses are greater than revenues long enough, the company goes out of business. Burdensome regulations, high labor costs, and products being made overseas are all reasons that a company can’t make a profit. It turns out that steel can be made cheaper elsewhere- hence many steel/manufacturing plants have shut their doors. If it were profitable, they would still be in business. Like it or not, profit margin and capitalism runs the US.

Oliver Pine

You are the guy that said “these areas” so you might not want to talk about generalizations.

It is nice that you realize that companies have to make money. That doesn’t change the fact that margins for companies are much larger now than they were years ago. That means that the owners are taking more of the cut now, almost twice as much as they used to.

Lets see now average labor cost for a corporations is about 15%. The wage increase in the United States over the last ten years has been about .5% over CPI.

Investors used to take 5% of the gross now they take 10%.

So its high labor costs then?

Oh its taxes you mean. Corporations paid about 300 billion dollars in taxes. If they are being taxed at the 35% then that means the total amount that corporations made in the US in 2012 would be something like 1 trillion dollars out of about 15 trillion GDP. Do you really think that corporations only made 1 dollar out of every 15 in the US? That is overtaxing?

Steel is not the only thing that this area made. My grandfather worked his whole life at a plant that made furniture and my grandmother worked at an electronics plant. Their pay adjusted for inflation was not less than it is now for similar jobs and they actually got a pension as well, which you will be hard pressed to find nowadays.

I’m sorry but if the company uses Chinese raw materials, Chinese labor and Chinese factories, it is Chinese. Business owners that move their businesses over there are basically saying that they are Chinese as well and not American.

This is also very short-sighted for the simple fact that you cannot have a consumption based economy where nodoby makes any money. Also, by moving all of our production over to the Chinese, if a war breaks out all they have to do is nationalize and our economy simply will not exist anymore. Those little numbers you see related DOW and S&P and IRA. Just kiss them goodbye.

Todays “entrepeneurs” are just rats leaving a sinking ship. The thing that is so hard to take is that the ship does not have to be sinking. It is just the sheer greed that is sucking the life out of America.

And they better watch their back.

When a person who works their tail off ends up eating hardtack with weevils while their neighbor who just sits and watches the money roll in off the stock market gets cake and champagne, people pick up rifles and they move out.

that margins for companies are much larger now than they were years ago. That means that the owners are taking more of the cut now, almost twice as much as they used to.

Gallum

I love how you totally ignore how much of their profit goes straight back into the economy.

Oliver Pine

OK. What we had a generation or so ago was a setup where the owners of a company would take something like a 10% margin of the gross and pay out about 20% to the employees for a 4 to 1 ratio. Now ownership takes a 10% margin. Where did the 5% go? Off the payroll so instead of 20% to 5% you have 15% to 10%.

Now I don’t know if you are happy that the guy who does nothing but runs your company is making twice as much money while you take a 75% pay & benefit cut, but I am not.

As to your point. If you give a billionaire a million more dollars he will not spend it all, but if you give a group of people making the median income, they will spend every penny. The economic impact is greater when the people that actually are doing the work make a fair amount of the money being made. Not to mention the fact that many of these guys are jumping ship and taking that money with them to spend in other countries.

Gallum

Stop incentivising capital flight and the money will be spent here. Duh

Oliver Pine

Exactly how is capital flight incentivized? the US effective corporate tax rate has been on a steady decline since World War II. Globalization and the idea of a totally free market with no restraints is why we have companies being able to move wholesale out of the United States and yet still be owned by investors in the United States. Our “capital” is flying to China because everything we buy is made there.

I am sure every thing I say will be considered wrong to you since you have taken an antagonistic stance and anymore once a person is seen as someone from “the other side” everything they do or say is wrong regardless of the merit of the individual. The truth is, however, that pretty much nothing I have said is “liberal” as the title of the article reads. In fact, the Republican party and its parent party the Whigs were the party that were proponents of tariffs in order to protect our industries.

I have said it already and will say it again, the people that are moving our industrial complex overseas to possible military rivals are traitors. If there is a future conflict with China they wont have to bomb our factories to shut them down. They will just nationalize them and stop imports.

Gallum

What is the capital flight incentive? Our corporate tax rate is higher than most devolved nations in the world. Duh. Plus there is a lot of money they can save on other taxes and regulations. I know you have this magical world you aspire to create but it would be nice if you stopped ignoring the realities of your policies. It don’t care what your intentions are, business doesn’t care what your intentions are, if you continue to push policies that are hostile to business then business will leave. Really basic stuff, shouldn’t need to explain it. This is basic economics, not right vs left.

Oliver Pine

You are making it sound like this”capital flight incentive” is a new thing. Our laws with regard to trade and taxes have not changed very much over the past few decades. You are the one that is making it sound like there have been new government policies put in place that are an obstruction to the growth of our economy.

I don’t have policies. I haven’t pushed any policies. This is just idiocy. We are living in a time where a group of people go about bawling “the sky is falling, look” and then point away from the sky. No new economic policies other than ones that bailed out large corporations have been enacted since Obama took office. None. Even if he wanted them they wouldn’t get through congress. Obamacare, which rich people pretend to hate, has done more for protecting the large corporate healthcare interest than anything.

You want a policy? Here. Cut corporate tax rate to 0%. Get rid of dividend taxes, capital gains tax, estate tax, carried interest and tax all income as it is. Income. You pay the rate for all the money you earn at the Federal income tax rate. This would mean that billionaires pay the top rate (39.6 now but could be 35). Companies would have more money to pay employees, conduct R&D and yes, pay their investors. In the long run investors would be getting so mmuch more money that it would actually offset the fact that they aren’t getting away with the 15% captial gains rate.

For example, Romney made 20 million and paid about 15% in taxes or 3 million.

You are the one saying that the corporate tax rate is the problem here and that rate is currently 35% so if a corporation could keepall that money they could pay that 35% out. Lets say 1 billion gross. Used to be 650 net. now they get the 350K more ending up with about 1.5x as much money

Romney makes almost all his money from investments so he now makes 30 million from investments instead of 20 milion.

So currently his take home after tax is 20 million minus 3 million or 17 million

My way he makes 30 million minus 12 million for take home pay of 18 million.

He actually does better. The total amount taken in by the government is pretty much the same.

Gallum

Ok look the boring leftist rhetoric talking points have lost my interest. You are spouting the same ignorance that has been disproved time and time again by myself. Not really interested in going through your social engineering hypothetical that only works in vacuums and fantasy lands while the whole time you Demonize rich people for making too much money and then try and claim at the end that using your methods they would actually make MORE money haha. Yeah, ok, i believe you. I am sure the policies you support because you want those evil rich job creating investors to have less money will actually increase their take home wealth every year. That makes sense… sheeeesh

Oliver Pine

So you believe that if you go to work everyday and sweat for what you do you should pay a higher tax rate than a person that merely had some capital and put it in an investment? At the end of the day it is all income. The math works out. You can say odd vague remarks, but that is about it. In the case I stated Romney would take home more money in the long run, enabling him to “job create” more. And he still would literally have had to burn zero calories making that money. A minimum wage worker would have to work a quarter million hours to make the same amount of money. That is like twenty or thirty lifetimes of work. This is not hypothetical. Romney pays less in taxes than you do for doing nothing and you are fine with that. It is a concrete fact.

Gallum

Ugh yeah, if some risked their earning to invest in the market then I don’t think they should be punished. I think they should be rewarded.

Andy

You wanna get the economy going? High velocity money. Raise the minimum wage in order to put more money in the hands of people who will immediately spend it. That really gets the gears of the economy turning, not billionaires creating fictional wealth with some derivatives speculation bubble.

Gallum

Wrong, if you want a raise then move up, increase your skill, or get a new job. Raising the minimum wage isn’t the answer.

Andy

That’s a nice thought, but unfortunately there aren’t enough higher paying jobs available for everybody to get one.

Gallum

Fortuantly, there are enough high paying jobs for the people who deserve them. If you don’t want to work your way up or compete for a better job then start a business. I am a 23 year old making 6 figures, people like you who complain about there not being jobs make me laugh.

Andy

That’s great for you, but not everyone can start a business or move to a higher paying job. There are always going to be low-paying menial jobs that someone has to fill. In the richest country in the history of the world, why shouldn’t everyone be able to make a decent living regardless of their job?

Gallas

Because a “decent living” is subjective first of all.

Andy

Fine, so let’s talk about it, come to a consensus on the subjective definition of a decent living wage, and then index that to inflation.

Question: would you support keeping the minimum wage as it is, but indexing it to inflation?

Gallas

Sure, we can index it. What is your standard for a decent wage?

Andy

Glad you support indexing! For many the min wage has actually been falling in recent years since it is not tied to inflation.

To me a decent wage is one that allows you to pay the costs of living (healthy food, housing/utilities, transportation, medical costs), plus a little extra for savings and entertainment. So depending on the cost of living in your area that can vary a fair amount.

I think the $15/hr that Bernie Sanders is advocating is a good overall goal. Perhaps a tad too high for small businesses; I would support lower min wages for businesses employing fewer than a certain amount of people.

Gallas

Medical costs can vary widely depending on the person. Housing varies widely depending on the size of the family. Eating “healthy” is very subjective. Your standard of what a decent wage is does not set any standard. Unless, you are using a “feel good” business should be required to offer the gig hest standard of living possible to its workers regardless of their contribution?
What do you want the “living wage” to cover because I guarantee that 15 dollars an hour isn’t going to cover it for entire families of part time workers.

Andy

Eating healthy has SOME subjectivity, sure, but don’t pretend that there aren’t plenty of objective measures. I’m not talking about shopping at Whole Foods for everything and going totally organic… I mean being able to afford a balanced diet that includes adequate amounts of fruits, vegetables, meat, etc. People shouldn’t have to live off of Ramen, fast food and microwave dinners even though that is cheap.

I just explained what I want the living wage to cover: housing, food, transportation, medical care, and some extra for entertainment and savings.

Businesses shouldn’t be forced to offer the “highest standard of living possible” (I assume that is what you meant to type), just a decent standard of living. Remember, this is the richest country in the entire history of the world. It is beyond ridiculous that we have the amounts of poverty and hunger that currently exist. Employees that go above and beyond can enjoy higher wages and standards of living. I just don’t think people should be living in poverty even when working full-time.

A hike in the minimum wage should be combined with a guaranteed jobs program. The government can act as an employer of last resort, providing jobs directly and/or funding local programs which create jobs. This can replace our current messy and confusing welfare system where you have to use one agency for food stamps, a different one for housing, etc. Just pay people adequately and guarantee them a job and they will be able to afford all those things. If they don’t work, then they don’t eat. Seems simple and conservative to me!

Gallas

So we should have a guaranteed employment system where anyone who isn’t hired by a company is guaranteed employment with the government at 15$ an hour? What if the person calls in sick every other day? What if it is a family of four with a single mom, they are still going to be in poverty. This is my point, you are trying to spout off these feel good measures like “eatting healthy and ending poverty” Regardless of whether what you are proposing will actually address the issue. So, do you actually have a solution that meets the goals or are you just presenting pie in the sky as an excuse for raising the minimum wage to 15$ an hour, knowing it won’t solve the problems you present? How about this, we need to end world hunger so let’s seal the border?

Andy

To answer your questions in order:

1) Yes. 2) Fire them and don’t let them reapply for a month. 3) Sure, but how is that different from the current situation? 4) The solution I describe is not pie in the sky, and would go a long ways toward alleviating our current problems. 5) Huh?

Gallas

Here’s the thing, it wouldn’t go a long way towards solving the problem and nothing you have said suggests otherwise. You are making excuses for raising the minimum wage by pretending it will end poverty. In fact, it will cause more people to be bellow the poverty line, not less. Basically, this goes back to wanting everyone to be equally poor rather than creating opportunity. Opportunity reduces poverty; raising taxes massively to pay for guaranteed employment and forcing businesses to pay more for low skill labor does not reduce poverty.

Andy

I disagree that it won’t help. Remember my original point about high velocity money? Economies go bad because there is not enough circulation. Increasing the minimum wage will increase the circulation of money through the economy.

Think of it this way. Say you are running a McDonald’s and you sell 100 burgers a day. A minimum wage increase comes along, and now you have to pay your employees more. If you were stuck selling 100 burgers a day that would be bad. But a lot of your customers are people who have minimum wage jobs and are now making more money. All those employees from Wendy’s and Burger King and Pizza Hut have some extra cash, and some of them are gonna go to McDonald’s. So maybe you are now selling 150 burgers a day. The increased buying power of your customer base has offset the increased price of labor, and now everyone is better off.

Additionally, there have been several studies done showing that an increase in the minimum wage has little to no effect on the unemployment rate.

By the way, thanks for the civil conversation. Always enjoyable discussing actual issues instead of hurling insults and invective.

Gallas

And I disagree that it would help. Yeah, the people at the bottom will have more money but the people at the middle or right above the bottom will have Less buying power than they did. Now the drivers of the economy, the middle class, has lower standard of living but the people who work at McDonald’s can buy an extra cheese burger? If you want 15$ an hour then you need to learn a skill or find one of the many jobs that already pay that amount. The overwhelming majority of people working at fast food restaurants or places like walmart don’t even work full time so the obvious answer is to get a second part time job. Not force businesses to pay more than they should.

Andy

That’s assuming raising the minimum wage will cause prices to go up a lot. It will some, but not a lot, and remember it will stimulate the overall economy. So the companies those middle class people work for will start doing better, they will get raises and have more buying power.

So you are taking the position that we need to force companies to pay “fair wages” because that will stimulate the economy and those same companies that you felt the need to force will voluntarily hand out raises? Either your theory assumes companies are willing to give out fair raises or they wont, you can’t have it both ways. Forcing businesses to give out raises to people at the bottom doesn’t magically make them more likely to give out raises to the middle, you are working off of cherry picked measurements of how well the economy is doing in order to justify forcing business to pay more than they need to. Then you turn around and say that the increased costs shouldered by the middle class don’t matter because…?

Andy

Yes, I take the position that companies should be forced pay fair wages. That’s the point of having a minimum wage. You wouldn’t advocate getting rid of the minimum wage, right?

When minimum wage earners get more money, they will immediately spend that money. This increases demand in the economy, which will cause most companies to start doing better. If a company is doing better then yeah, it will be able to afford to give raises in order to retain and attract more talent.

I don’t think there will be very much increased cost, because the overall improvement in the economy will offset it. And even if there is increased cost, I would rather help out the poorest segment of our society even if it (slightly) hurts the middle class.

fel121

Dude I told you, you are arguing with a fool, all the hard numbers and info you gave this dolt and he just continues to spew none sense that he heard on AM radio, give it up.

IRaiseBlackKids90%nodaddys

While you burn down your own cities…which are built by WORKING americans…complaining your THUGS are good people?

fel121

You realize you are arguing with right wing robots who know nothing that was not spoon feed them from Rush, Glen, or Fox news.

Save your breath, just make sure you are out of debt when the right retakes the Congress and finishes the job of selling this country to the highest bidder they started under Clinton.

Oliver Pine

The other thing here is I keep hearing this whining about the costs of “welfare” which usually is just money given to poor people who have children and accounts for about 400 billion or pretty close to 10% of the budget. That is for things like child food programs, tax credits and EITC which is basically another child tax credit. If you want to throw in SSI & Medicaid as welfare you are looking at maybe another 400 billion so the greedy selfish guys cost us as a part of the budget about 20%. Nevermind that many of those greedy people work, some more than one job. Ryan was just talking about expanding the EITC so you might want to jump on that liberal while your at it.

There are 2 reasons that we have larger deficits than before Baby Boomers and Bombs.

It has not been a secret to anyone who paid any attention to actuarial data over the last 30 years that when the Baby Boomers retired there would be a huge strain on the government. We have vast numbers of people who are retiring. They live to be 77 now not 67. For that whole time we have to pay pensions & health care. Right now we are paying about a trillion and a half for that which is of course growing because even though we have the most free market health care system in any developed country which is supposed to be aces for keeping costs down we run about 18% of our GDP in health care costs. Double what all those commies over in Europe pay. The total here works out give or take to about 33%.

The military just in the form of the department of Defense spending has more than doubled since 2001. When Bush took office it was at $300B/yr and now it is $700B/yr. Add in the VA (130B) Homeland Security (60B) and taking care of our nukes over there at Energy (10B) and we are up to 900B which is about 25%.

The current interest payments on the debt is around 400 billion which is close to 10% of the budget and that is with severely depressed interest rates. If we stopped keeping them so low that number could nearly double.

Most of the rest is just normal discretionary spending.

The point here is that making it sound like government spending is out of control because of a bunch of welfare queens in the ghetto is just stupid. But hey go ahead and try cutting the “fat” off the government rolls.

If you want to cut child credits go ahead. Don’t like food stamps? Cut them too. Get rid of HUD and put a million people on the streets. Cut SSI so we can have a bunch of mentally “challenged” people on those streets too. Chop Medicaid. More sick people is better. We don’t need rehabs for addicts or anything like that, especially now the we have millions more on the streets.

You want to see a real episode of the Walking Dead. Cut all those programs right now. Yeah it makes a lot more sense to do that than to just provide employment for them and have them making money which they will spend at store, increasing the economy and making your whining butt richer.

Go ahead cut them. You might find out the streets will be coming to a neighborhood near you.

whidbeyisland

You’re absolutely correct. The cities that have “burdensome regulation climates” like San Jose, Sea-Tac, San Francisco, etc. where the minimum wage is $15.00 an hour (a burdensome regulation climate for business if there ever was one) are suffering mightily. HA!

Well, call it payback for all of the years we have taken crap off of you. You leftists certainly don’t “love and understand” your betters, so why should we keep kowtowing to you and not fighting back? Regressives are famous for having mental illnesses, for a sane person can’t POSSIBLY believe the schit you all do, so when you don’t get any push-back, you think you’ve won the argument. It’s impossible to be nice to you too, as you see it as a weakness.

Furthermore, the willful destruction you’re doing to my country makes you a natural enemy. Eight years of Obama will have done much to finally awaken the silent majority. We’re getting sick of being vilified and mocked, when all we do is pull the economic wagon of this country. So get used to the fury you’re seeing now.

Andy

Left versus right, liberal versus conservative… these are just tactics the elites use to to divide and conquer the people. Starting with Reagan corporations and big money have been slowly taking over the country and the levers of power, and we are now to the point where the wishes of everyday people have nearly no influence on the decisions which are made in government. Legalized corruption has become rampant, Citizens United was gasoline poured on the fire. This has to stop.

I am against name-calling and insults no matter which side is doing it. Convince me that your position is right using logic and evidence and I will change my opinion.

abcnewscensorscansuckit

LOL! You think the government-class started with Reagan?!? That’s hilarious, given that Wilson and FDR preceded him…

Andy

“government-class”? Not sure what you mean by that. I am talking about the time when corporations and financial interests started getting too powerful again after FDR showed them who is boss.

abcnewscensorscansuckit

Here’s a simple fact that even a stupid broad should understand: when you raise the cost of labor, the most costly expense of every business, the price of their goods must rise accordingly. What this does is put the 16 year-old who still lives at home and has a minimum wage job, back at square one. His/her purchasing power didn’t increase at all. What about that can’t you dumb libtards grasp?

abcnewscensorscansuckit

Set up your own business with no demand for it, you fool. You can’t call people “greedy” who want to protect their own money. Greed is people like you demanding that “the rich” give their money up to YOU, to “even things out.” Greed is demanding something that isn’t yours.

a_realist

California has rural run down areas… where those areas run down by liberals… umm.. yeah

alex

Agree, that california has too many regulations, although business is booming,does that mean that regulations don’t stiffle business, NO.

We have a sort of facism in this country, or concentration of wealth, big companies like Google and silicon valley, can withstand or not affected by regulations, but many small business leaders are.

Gallum

Maybe if you stopped raising the taxes then businesses would stop leaving you fools hahaha

Oliver Pine

Actually taxes have been lowered not raised. The Bush tax cuts were a tax relief program that was set to run out in 2010. Many of the cuts were retained so the taxes are actually lower now.

Gallum

That is federal. I am talking about Democrat cities tax in our business. States like Texas, where I live arent having this problem that you describe because we aren’t hostile to business. Pretty simple stuff

Oliver Pine

That’s interesting. I am glad its very simple for you. You could probably cite many instances of local taxes being raised in some areas while ignoring others, but I wouldn’t want you to bore me.

Gallum

One thing I am sure of is that stats and facts bore you.

Oliver Pine

It is just boring to have to hear your manufactured talking points answers without looking at truth. Local tax policies do not have much effect on “capital flight” anyways. Take banking for instance. There are many localities that have harsher tax policy, but it simply does not matter. Banks go to Delaware because that’s where they can get the cheapest tax code. They don’t leave the country though. You said that rising taxes are causing companies to leave the country. Taxes have not been raised. Corporations pay less tax now then they ever have, so your statement, “if you stopped raising the taxes then businesses would stop leaving “, is false. It is simply not happening. It is just the typical chorus spouted by wealthy people that live off the backs of others in order to decrease their already low tax burdens; a chorus that is then parroted by non-thinking fools like yourself. The sad thing is that you are actually cheating yourself out of being fairly compensated.

fel121

It is also the cry of the low information dimwit that the modern day Conservative movement has convinced to vote against their own best interests, which if i were a betting men, I would say more accurately defines our friend Gallum here.

alex

Texas, highest property tax rates in the nation, and laws that made the housing bubble less relevant because the socialist policy of restricting home equity loans.

Gallum

I’ll take property tax over income tax any day of the week.

CivilDutiesToREALAmericansNOTu

DETROIT was built and worked in…until MOOCHERS came…when CRIME went up, as the workers went to work…the moochers robbed the workers (not devising that their existence was in LARGE PART of thanks to those workers), the workers got fed up and left. THE WORKERS LEFT, but the MOOCHERS stayed. This doesn’t work for moochers, who now have no one to blame but themselves…yet the NAACP files for CIVIL RIGHTS on why they can’t PAY THEIR BILLS for services we pay for. AND TO ADD…IF I have to pass a urine sample to WORK to COVER your silly azzz, then you should have to pass it to RECEIVE those funds. You can’t use my passing the test as yours. STOP COMPLAINING and making up “red states” use welfare off FAKE numbers and read this article above, along with what I write. GET OFF YOUR AZZES! Realize that we are HIDING from you because we are sick of you mooching off us.

Oliver Pine

Funny thing, this guys data is wrong anyways. Southern rednecks are seen as the biggest moochers, simply because they are the biggest moochers.

“When adjusted for inflation, the value of welfare benefits in Alabama has increased $5,760 since 1995. That’s the ninth highest increase in the nation over that time period.” — CATO institute

Most of the people that collect “welfare” work. Most of them full time. People who collect eitc, child tax credit, making work pay credit & TANF have to work to collect benefits. Most of those programs are directed at working families with children. Those “benefits” are paid largely in the form of tax credits, so if you have no income you cannot possibly benefit from them.

As far as Detroit goes, if you wanted to make an argument that unions gained too much power in the automotive industry, causing pensions and benefits to rise above a level that the companies could sustain, then perhaps you might be worth listening to. The “hard workers” of Detroit did not leave. The jobs left for two reasons: productivity increases (if a machine does all the welding you don’t need to hire welders) and the efficiency of transoceanic shipping.

I am a little confused as to what the proper spelling of “azz” is. Are their two or three Zs? You see I was never fortunate enough to go to a quaint one room schoolhouse with an outhouse like ya’ll get too. Are you worried that you might not pass a urine test? I can pass mine just fine. Oh, and just in case you didn’t know, you don’t actually pass a urine test by chugging it down the fastest. Jebediah was trolling you.

See you on the next episode of Moonshiners. Keep up the good work my wonderful fellow American.

alex

Why spin everything as politics, in fact Detroit is not bankrupt because of liberals as conservatives like to claim, in fact conservative policies could have bankrupted Detroit.

The reason Detroit failed, and deserves to fail is because they put out an inferior product compared to the Japanese care makers.

It’s freedom and capitalism that destroyed Detroit, and it should be ok, the government should not bail-out detroit, or subsidize companies that make inferior cars. The government should also not pander to politicians seeking import tarriffs and other laws to make it difficult to buy foreign cars.

How did detroit go more bankrupt, well the japanese automakers had to sort of “bribe” clinton, by saying in return for not tarrifing our cars we will build some of our cars right here in the US.

So, you don’t have to be a liberal to oppose detroit. In fact detroit’s failure should be what conservatives should hope for, freedom of consumer choice, and less pay to play politics by clinton

whidbeyisland

Unlike the above article, the following link takes into account much more than just a narrow issue like welfare. If you look at all the sources, not simply one or two handpicked to make their point (I’m referring to you, Young Conservatives), you’ll see that primarily Red States are taking in more federal tax dollars than they generate, and most blue states are using less than they pay in.

Good job of cherry picking federal funds given to states so it works for your article.

cameron

Wait wasn’t it the gop candidate Romney who said people on social security are moochers? Now your attacking Al Krugman? LOL.

Aaron King

lol.

you have spent a lot of time reading blogs to come to a stupid conclusion based on a very simple misunderstanding.

in fact, the only thing that matters is how much money the state sends to the feds, and how much money the state gets back. by that measure, which is the only one that matters, blue states are propping up the red states.

what a jackass you are. how about just looking at reality and saying “ah, i see, I was wrong” instead of “oh, I can come up with a complicated way of making this seem different”?

David2020

“Liberals repeatedly question why conservatives ‘vote against their own interests.’ But maybe the simple answer is because they aren’t. Think about it, who would?”

Liberals don’t “repeatedly question” that. But I see Dartmouth is still turning out patriots.

alex

They do and many liberals also vote against their economic interests and spin articles like red state welfare, if we abolished the IRS , democrats wouldn’t complain what the reaped what they sow.

alex

It’s not baloney, its just the author is trying to use little bits of data here and there to try to argue with the FACTS.

The CONSERVATIVE tax foundation which advocates lower taxes,spending, and more flatter taxes was one of the first organizations to really get the message out there.

The reason blue states subsidize red states, is due to the “progressive income tax”,

Of course its not as if every blue state is subsidizing red states, Texas for example gets less money back from the feds for every $1 while Mississippi has gotten back about double. Vermont and Hawaii also get much more than they put in.

Also Virginia which has gotten bluer and Maryland get back more than their fair share so has new mexico.

alex

The author is also misleading people by saying that SS and Medicare are not welfare, they are and he is attacking people by spinning it on the democrats.

Fact is most recipients of Medicare receive far more from it then they pay into it, should young people really subsidize old people, the GOP is the one playing handouts by refusing to cut programs from seniors.

Also, the author is ignoring that Social Security is partially welfare, SS is designed to replace your earnings BUT, a person making 100k for a 10 years (or close to the payroll tax cap), is not going to get 2x the SS benefits that a person making 50k. SS has a formula bent curve, meaning a person making close to minimum wage all their live will get a SS benefit closer to minimum wage, then a person making 100k most of their lives. Medicare is also means tested too to an extent but that’s based on premiums.

Also most medicaid spending goes toward old people in nursing homes because we as a society (not personally me or the author), have determind that we won’t let old people die out, before medicaid, it was the “CHILDREN’S RESPONSIBILITY TO PAY FOR THEIR PARENT’S HEALTH COSTS”, it’s called filal responsibility and there was a case in Pennsyvlania where it was upheld.

So I think the author is off the mark by spinning it in reverse, also since when is PBS used as a source, isn’t it a liberal government institution. It seems as if the author is trying to beat around the bush using little numbers from here and there to try to spin out.

In partial defense of the author, its the liberals who are responsible for the transfer payments, so they shouldn’t complain, but the case is not closed as the author claims it is.

hoju_saram

This article is nonsense. Why just choose one small metric (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) to prove that Red States aren’t Welfare Queens, whilst ignoring other federal handouts and ignoring how much they give back to federal coffers? It makes no sense (unless you’re being disingenuous).

The point of the original piece (which this article fails to address, much less challenge) is that Red States take more than they give. They are net moochers.

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Michael Cantrell is contributor for Young Conservatives with over 8 years of professional experience. He is dedicated to using his skills to uphold conservative principles and defend liberty to the best of his ability. Michael believes wholeheartedly in the Constitution and the principles it was created from and seeks to communicate these eternal truths through engaging pop culture. Michael is also an avid comic book fan and loves movies, music, and television. But most of all, he loves Jesus. Follow Michael on Twitter. Visit Michael's YouTube Channel Nerdy Conservative

Before becoming a writer for Young Conservatives, John worked in the Financial Intelligence Unit for American Express, was a political campaign specialist, and even wrote a few episodes for a Disney Channel TV series. He is an avid consumer of all things politics and sports, and is a major fan of boxing, the Los Angeles Dodgers, and the Arizona Cardinals. He is proud to be an unapologetic conservative American, and has so far attended three KISS concerts in his life. John S. Roberts holds a Political Science degree from Arizona State University.
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